Bridge Over Troubled Water
by TealEyed-Quatre
Summary: An exploration into the mind of a young Jim Kirk.


**Title: **Bridge Over Troubled Water

**Author:** TealEyed_Quatre

**Universe/Series:** Star Trek Reboot

**Rating: **PG-13

**Pairing/Relationship Status: **None

**Word Count: **825

**Genre: **Angst, H/C, Character Exploration

**Warnings:** Language, Religious Undertones, Teenagers, Faulty Logic (on the part of the author)

**Summary: **And exploration into the mind of a young Jim Kirk.

Jim Kirk is thirteen when he finds the old Anglican Bible in a box in the farmhouse's attic.

It's a translation from the early twenty-first century, before First Contact and back when most American households still grounded their families in faith. It's almost as old as the farmhouse itself, a relic that belonged to many previous generations of Kirks, right up until his great-grandparents packed it away.

In an act of rebellion mostly inspired by curiosity, he keeps it in his room and reads it, attempting to find reasons as to why the Christian faith lasted so long. Intellectually, Jim knows that religions are usually the longest-lasting part of a civilization- but he wants to know _why_.

The book is full of rules and regulations, commandments that God's people had to follow if they wanted to remain in His goodwill and enter His Kingdom after they died. Jim watches from the distant future as they fail again and again, and God reprimands and punishes- and gives them another chance. He picks them up and reassures them and professes His love for His unruly, disobedient children.

Jim reads, and wonders if this is what it is like to have a father.

Almost immediately, he crushes the notion, mercilessly grinding it beneath his heel. He doesn't need thoughts like that. He locks the book in a drawer and doesn't touch it again.

But when he finds out that his best friend, his only friend, really hates him, just like every other one of his classmates, that little voice speaks up.

When Frank breaks his ribs for the first time and he lies gasping on the floor, feeling like his innards are going to spill from between his fingers, the little voice speaks up.

When they get the letter from the Los Angeles Police Department, stating that Sam's emaciated and broken body was found in an alley, and could they please come and get it, the little voice speaks up.

When they're standing in the graveyard and Winona finally turns to him and says, it's your fault, you little shit, you had to look just like your father, and you defile his memory just by existing you get in so many fights you're only thirteen and you've been in jail you little shit you're such a burden why are you even still here—

The little voice speaks up.

And Jim fights it, even as he digs his nails into his palms until he draws blood and endures the abuse she's heaping on him- he fights the hope, the thought that maybe he wasn't meant to live like this, that maybe his life was supposed to be something bigger.

Eventually, he gives a little. He brings the Bible out and reads on. Jim reads about promises and hopes and fears and life that God wants of His children to have, and he thinks that's what kept this faith going for so long, despite the failures and the rules and the punishments- hope.

Somewhere along the way, Jim realizes, such a hope has grown inside himself. He examines it with all the detachment he can muster, trying to decide if it's really a good thing to have. It feels almost immeasurably good, this hope, and that is precisely what Jim is afraid of.

Hope has never done him any good. There has almost always been some sort of hope inside him, often buried too deep for him to recognize, but it has been there. And every hope, no matter how trifling, has been shattered.

So Jim examines this new hope, birthed in the crumbling vellum pages of his family's history, and makes his decision.

He takes the threads binding his hope to his mind and begins to unravel them, picking them apart with painstaking care until not one remains. Then he carries the Bible back to the attic and packs it away with gentle hands.

For years, Jim fills the empty, gaping wound with booze, with women, with men, with bars, with the clarity that only comes when he's bruised and aching and someone else's fist is splattered with his blood. He doesn't think about a young boy and a book and the idea of what a father should be. He doesn't think about the future, about a job or a family or stability.

He thinks about his next scheme, how much gas is left in the tank of his hoverbike, what pick-up line he'll use on the next girl (or boy) he takes a fancy to.

At least, these are the things he thinks about until one fateful night in a bar with a beautiful girl and an ugly fight and a man named Captain Christopher Pike.

And as he thinks about Pike's challenge, about Starfleet, about his father, there is a tiny resurgence of hope, and he is momentarily startled.

He laughs a little, then, when he realizes what his younger self had forgotten:

Hope never truly dies.


End file.
